Discussion

Palmier from scratch recipe?

Does anyone have a recipe to make palmiers (elephant ears) from scratch? Since it's break I have a lot of free time on my hands and I'm thinking that I should try my hand at making some palmiers; does anyone have a recipe? Thanks.

The dough for palmiers is puff pastry. To make that from scratch you make a flour and water dough, roll it out, top it with a slab of butter, fold the combination, and repeat many times - making a many layered dough. The short cut is to buy the dough already made. Pepperidgefarm is the commonly available one, but it uses a special margarine instead of butter. Some places also sell a more expensive all butter puff pastry. There have been threads about buying puff pastry.

Once you have the puff pastry, it's just a matter of rolling a sheet into the appropriate scroll shape, cutting off slices, dusting them with sugar, and baking. Most recipes and boxes of puff pastry have instructions for make these, and other, pastries. The instructions are simple, but they require some care to get maximum rise, both in the original folding and rolling, and the final cutting and handling.

Many moons ago I made the one from Mastering the Art of French Cooking II (Julia Child). The instructions were super clear and the result was lovely. The best part is that it teaches you to make puff pastry and to not be afraid of it. A cool skill to acquire.

I'm halfway thru that recipe and it is going well. It uses a short cut puff pastry, but it still takes some time. I have made puff pastry from scratch and I can say that this version is easier, though I doubt it would puff as much as the real thing. But since palmiers are usually made with re-rolled puff pastry trimmings, it should work well. The main differenc eis the way the butter is incorporated--this is much less demanding temperature wise and brute force-wise.

I've turned the dough the three times and plant to do the final roll out with the cinnamon sugar and baking this weekend.

Hey thanks everyone. I ended up using the epicurious recipe since it was the easiest http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/foo... It took about 6 hours total time to make with most of the time as waiting time so I just watched episodes of "Flight of the Conchords" in between rolling periods. The hardest step was the last step which required the dough to be rolled out to be super thin where the dough started to rip and got sticky from all the sugar. Also, I ended up using only about half of the sugar so I'd suggest adding more sugar on top of the dough when folding and then sprinkle some on top before baking. This was certainly something that took a lot of time and devotion and at times it was very frustrating but when they come out of the oven looking so beautiful it sort makes it worth it: sort of. Tastewise, they were all right; I've had better but the cinnamon is quite nice in it. Pictures in the next reply.

thanks! it's been a while since i've read this post and your comment made me look back at it, and it reminded me of how easy making these truly was! I've tried making some full out puff pastry and croissants too recently but the epicurious recipe above actually tastes just as good as the puff pastry and is much much much easier,

Cut 1 stick of butter (1/2 C.) into 7/8 C. of flour. Mix in 1/4 C. of sour cream. Shape the dough into a square and wrap it in wax paper or plastic wrap. Refridgerate overnight (you can cut the time to 2 hours if you really want to eat them soon).

Divide the dough in half. For each half of the dough, sprinkle 2 Tbsp. of sugar on the rolling surface (use more if the dough sticks to the rolling surface; you can roll between two sheets of wax paper, too, which makes cleanup easy!) to roll out the dough into 10"X5" rectangular sheet. Roll each end of the longer side toward the middle to create a scroll. Wrap each "scroll" in wax paper and refridgerate for another couple of hours.

Slice each scroll into 1/4" thick slices. Cover a large cookie sheets with parchment paper or foil. Dip each slice in sugar (both sides) and place on the prepared cookie sheet at least an inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes in 375 degree oven (preheat, of course), then take out the cookie sheet from the oven, flip the cookies and return to bake for another 3-5 minutes. Depending on the heat distribution of the cookie sheet you are using, the outer cookies may brown faster so you can take them out earlier and continue to bake the rest of the cookies. When the palmiers are done, quickly transfer them to wire rack to cool. Then enjoy these mouth-watering cookies!!

I personally like my palmiers pretty dark because that makes them more crispy, but you can control the color of the cookies by adjusting the baking time depending on your preference.